Bloomberg: Bird Flu Found in India, Malaysia Prompts Import Bans (Update4)

[PhilipShore]

Bloomberg
Bird Flu Found in India, Malaysia Prompts Import Bans (Update4)
Feb. 21

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=as5eokD7VAys&refer=us

eb. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore, China and at least four other Asian countries imposed bans on some chicken imports after bird flu was found in India and Malaysia. Poultry prices plunged in India because of concern over the lethal H5N1 virus.

Shares of Leong Hup Holdings Bhd., Malaysia's biggest chicken supplier, dropped as much as 25 percent, leading other poultry stocks lower, after Singapore suspended imports of poultry and eggs from the Malaysian state of Selangor.

Chicken prices fell 42 percent Feb. 19 at the Ghazipur poultry market in New Delhi, India's biggest, the day after an outbreak was discovered in poultry in the western state of Maharashtra, said Shashi Kapur, president of the Poultry Federation of India. Jet Airways Ltd., the country's largest domestic carrier, took the meat off menus.

``Demand for poultry will definitely be affected in the short term as people will be concerned,'' Kapur, who owns the Kegg Farms Group in Gurgaon, a New Delhi suburb, said yesterday in an interview. ``It's a knee-jerk scare.''

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Good thing I sent back those pillows full of chicken feathers.

[Mojorabbit]

2. Tyson

Formation of testing co-op by US poultry processors:

“According to the National Chicken Council, most U.S. chicken producers have agreed to participate in a testing program that will test bird flocks for avian flu before they are slaughtered.”

“Tyson Foods Inc. has more than one-quarter of the market, followed by Pilgrim's Pride Corp., Gold Kist Inc. and Perdue Farms Inc.”

http://www.newstarget.com/017989.html

News article on interview with Jim Perdue, of Perdue Farms, Inc.

“The threat of bird flu is hammering chicken prices overseas and hurting U.S. exports -- and it's only a matter of time until the United States is faced with its own avian influenza scare, the head of one of the nation's largest poultry producers said Wednesday in Orlando.

Jim Perdue, chairman of Perdue Farms Inc., said less-deadly strains of bird flu circulate all the time among birds and fowl, but public fears of the killer strain now in Asia and Eastern Europe will test the multibillion-dollar U.S. poultry industry when a milder version crops up on farms here.” ...

"It's backing up in freezers," Perdue said of U.S. chicken-meat exports to foreign countries.

That has hammered U.S. producers such as Tyson Foods Inc., the nation's largest chicken, beef and pork company, which reported on Monday that its first-quarter profit plunged 19 percent.

Tyson cited weak chicken prices, noting that demand is falling all across Asia, Europe and Russia as a result of bird-flu fears.”
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/food/orl-birdflu0206feb02,0,7303335.story?coll=orl-shoppinghg-headlinesinthek